PANEL 9

DEFENCE OF TURKEY

This panel acknowledges one simple fact about the Gallipoli campaign – the Turks fought hard and courageously against the invaders of their homeland. In the end, they won. They were conscious, also, that this victory had been against the might of two western European nations at the height of their power – the British Empire and the French Republic.

As the personal quote on this panel suggests, for the Turks 25 April 1915 was not a ‘landing’ but an ‘invasion’. It is, however, a generous quote from a man who recognises that soldiers often simply have to do what they are told and he bears no ill-will against his former enemies. Comparatively little is known, let alone acknowledged, in Australia and New Zealand about the experience of Gallipoli from the point of view of the ordinary Turkish soldier. We have hundreds, probably thousands, of books and articles about the stories of young men from every region of Australia who perished at Gallipoli. But who were the Turks? Where did these men come from within Turkey? What did they see themselves as fighting for? What stories of Gallipoli would emerge from a view of the campaign as seen through the eyes of a Turkish soldier?

One of the few officers at Anzac who spoke fluent Turkish was the Englishman Captain Aubrey Herbert. Herbert wrote the following tribute to the bravery of the Turkish soldiers at the Battle of Chunuk Bair:

The day went badly for us. We lost Chunuk Bair, and without it we cannot win the battle. The Turks have fought very finely, and all praise their courage. It was wonderful to see them charging down the hill, through the storm of shrapnel, under the white ghost wreaths of smoke.

[Aubrey Herbert, Mons, Kut and Anzac, London, 1919, pp.79-80, internet edition, http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/Mons/mons2.htm]